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Back during and just after the Vietnam War, there came into being a common image.

Every incident involving a Vietnam vet seemed to drive a perception that those who served in combat were “ticking time bombs.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder is not new. The pain and grief it inflicts on combat veterans is real. But here's what isn't — then or now. Not every combat vet, nor every person who suffers from PTSD, is a bomb sure to explode.

Recently, a veteran of the Iraq War was arrested on suspicion of shooting and killing two men, one of them, Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL and author of the book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History.”

The suspect, Eddie Ray Routh, has told authorities that he suffers from PTSD. He is a Marine veteran who was stationed in Iraq in 2007.

Let's suppose that Routh's diagnosis is based on an expert one. This would still make him an exception.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, put together by the American Psychiatric Association, lists PTSD as a mental disorder. Its symptoms include flashbacks to that traumatic event, withdrawal, numbing, hyperarousal and isolation.

Hyperarousal can include “irritability or outbursts of anger,” but there is no mention of violence.

The VA says, “The majority of individuals with PTSD have no history of aggression, violence, or criminal behavior, although irritability and anger are symptoms. Among individuals who do, minor aggression is more common than severe violence, and episodes of extreme violence are rare.”

And Routh's difficulties — he was taken to a mental hospital twice recently — may predate military service. It is all, in other words, complicated. Too complicated to make snap judgments about combat veterans in general or PTSD sufferers and the mentally ill based on isolated events.

Suicide among combat veterans has been linked to a variety of ills that may themselves be symptoms of deeper problems such as PTSD.

The military last year recorded a record 516 suicides, the Army accounting for two thirds of them. These numbers — and the growing ranks of soldiers and veterans suffering from PTSD — indicate that more has to be done, though much already is.

These combat veterans assumed an obligation that in turn obligates society toward them.

What won't help their reintegration stateside or to civilian life is an automatic assumption that they are dangerous. By and large, they are not, this recent shooting notwithstanding.